I don't know why everyone's so worried about China. Their official statements have basically been "We think America is showing proper restraint and North Korea is off the chain and needs to reign it back in" and their media as a whole is very critical of Un, even calling him 'Fatty Kim' and such.Hell, if North Korea touches anyone in the region China will probably flatten them, and I would very much like to see that. I'm tired of America playing the lone sheriff in town. There are other strong countries, let them take care of their local problems.

nekom:Vodka Zombie: I would feel kind of bad if we nuked North Korea. The people there are pretty much political prisoners and completely ignorant of the planet.

It would be like blowing up a box of kittens.

But, hey! You guys go ahead with your nuclear holocaust fetish.

No one is going to nuke them. EVEN if they used a nuke, I seriously doubt anyone would respond with nuclear weapons. A few precision strikes could eliminate their ability to make war with hopefully a minimum of casualties. What happens after the dust settles though, well that's the big mystery.

If NK nuked SK, we would probably not nuke them, hell if they nuked Japan (which in a Joker way would be farking hilarious) we would only respond with low yield munitions.....and then watch as a pissed off Japan became a full fledged nuclear power in a matter of farking days. Farking nipon nukes with tentacles and shiat. However. If NK nuked the mainland United States, somehow, maybe by giant sling shot or something, the sitting POTUS would HAVE to nuke them back, at least once. Not to send a message to the world, but to make sure that we didnt end up with a GoP majority rule and President for the next farking millennia. Any less of a response would be the death of the controlling power.

awalkingecho:PanicMan: Listen, if you need food, just ask for food. If you need technology, just ask for it. We'll give it to you. In our country we give our children iPads and mini electric cars. These things are toys to us. The only cost will be you gotta lighten up a bit, and open up more. Tell us things. Tell us what you need.

You want to stay a farm country? Fine. But use modern methods so you can actually feed your people.

If we sit back and wait for North Korea to attack there are going to be a lot of deaths and a lot of expensive damage on the South Korean side. On the other hand if we have the South secure the border against a brief attack from the North we could go in and destroy their nuclear capability and their command and control structure in probably a day. I think the biggest thing though is being prepared to prevent a mass exodus from North to South.

Vodka Zombie:I would feel kind of bad if we nuked North Korea. The people there are pretty much political prisoners and completely ignorant of the planet.

It would be like blowing up a box of kittens.

But, hey! You guys go ahead with your nuclear holocaust fetish.

I highly doubt we would nuke them. If they managed to get a warhead to an American city (which is near impossible) I would say the chances of us retaliating with nuclear weapons of our own are barely above zero. There's no point nuking a place that's that backward---some serious bombing of Pyongyang and conventional infantry/tanks cutting through the border would probably be enough to totally destabilize the regime.

Bottom line---NK is a house of cards---and none to sturdy by those standards. We don't need to use excessive force if we want to rid the world of the Kims once and for all, and I doubt that Obama is the kind of man who would use such excessive force. If Bush/Cheney were still in power, it might be a different story.

Listen, if you need food, just ask for food. If you need technology, just ask for it. We'll give it to you. In our country we give our children iPads and mini electric cars. These things are toys to us. The only cost will be you gotta lighten up a bit, and open up more. Tell us things. Tell us what you need.

You want to stay a farm country? Fine. But use modern methods so you can actually feed your people.

The Stealth Hippopotamus:colinspooky: Iraq. No WMDs but has oil. Invade. Best Korea. Yes WMDs or at least boasting such and threatening out loud to use them, but no oil. Stern letter.

Diffence?

China

TO be fair even China is starting to make moves to distance themselves from their crazy cousin

trickymoo:So, China is obligated to protect NK in the event they are attacked -OR- they launch an attack to punch wee baby farkface out in one?

China is positioning themselves to 'take care' of their ally in the impending collapse. Normally the Norks would saber rattle, get some food aid to quell the masses and the world would keep on spinning. The west has taken a 'fark it, whatevs' strat which has the Norks confused. So they keep ratcheting up the crazy dial hoping for aid to come.

China realizes that they may have to choke a biatch and are prepping for that moment.

This is going to be one of those rare moments where the US leans back and lets regional powers handle their regional conflict.

I've been watching loads of West Wing lately. Into the 6th season now and I find it amazing how much stuff they got right. Pres. Bartlet comments that unless China steps in and smacks NK around, they're going to be the biggest threat to global stability since the Cuban Missile Crisis, and he just might be right.

chopit:Sure, let the US take all the risk, and China gets all the reward. Not that rebuilding is easy or cheap, but at least they're not draining their coffers on things that go kablooey and have no benefits beyond that point. The US should say, "How about you help in the first place? Smack your petulant child around a bit, then we'll talk."

Looking at it from china's perspective and not from the perspective of a patriotic us citizen... how you you do it if you were china? Because seriously, china has the upper hand in this negotiation and has even more to gain.The pentagon would be able to save face by being able to go in and "liberate" the Norks and then basically let SK and China hash out how to clean up after us including any insurgents (if they exist out there) or otherwise. The pentagon gets to pop a few viagra and slap a commie country with its dick and then after it blows its load on the face of NK it gets to walk out and let china and SK lick up the leftovers...

Sure the US could get all pissy and start telling china to do it, but that would make us look bad by demanding china break a treaty with its neighbor just because we say so... never gonna happen, but if china could broker a deal, then they will listen...

DontMakeMeComeBackThere:no no no, you've got it all wrong. The way the liberal derp goes is: 1. Bush was teh "greedy e-vile guy" who invaded Iraq to get oil AND 2. Bush was also teh "stupid guy" that couldn't pull it off.

You're apparently trying to make a point by alluding to the notion that those two things are mutually exclusive. They are not.

meanmutton:colinspooky: Iraq. No WMDs but has oil. Invade. Best Korea. Yes WMDs or at least boasting such and threatening out loud to use them, but no oil. Stern letter.

What not having WMDs may look like: Warning: graphic, disturbing images of the civilian victims of Iraqi chemical weapons

Stop being disingenuous. Are there any pics of chemical attacks during the war? After? any items of interest found during the war? No? Then STFU. EVERYONE KNOWS he had chemical weapons many years before the war. That wasn't the issue. The issue was whether he still had any, was buying or making new ones, or was planning to do so. The answer is no to all of those, and it now looks like even the idiots in power knew that all along.

Joe Blowme:meanmutton: colinspooky: Iraq. No WMDs but has oil. Invade. Best Korea. Yes WMDs or at least boasting such and threatening out loud to use them, but no oil. Stern letter.

What not having WMDs may look like: Warning: graphic, disturbing images of the civilian victims of Iraqi chemical weapons

Maybe he forgot about that and the 14+ stern letters and resolutions from the UN to Iraq. That and american oil companies did not get the oil, but dont let that change his koolaid narative of "Blood for Oil"

Never understood this completely made up stupid. Hundreds of thousands of civilians killed, directly and openly funded terror, fired on coalition aircraft thousands of times, but all libs think is we went in and stole all the oil.

meanmutton:colinspooky: Iraq. No WMDs but has oil. Invade. Best Korea. Yes WMDs or at least boasting such and threatening out loud to use them, but no oil. Stern letter.

What not having WMDs may look like: Warning: graphic, disturbing images of the civilian victims of Iraqi chemical weapons

Maybe he forgot about that and the 14+ stern letters and resolutions from the UN to Iraq. That and american oil companies did not get the oil, but dont let that change his koolaid narative of "Blood for Oil"

BgJonson79:colinspooky: Iraq. No WMDs but has oil. Invade. Best Korea. Yes WMDs or at least boasting such and threatening out loud to use them, but no oil. Stern letter.

In fairness, we thought they still had WMDs because we had the receipts...

That's always been my pet theory on the WMDs, and not just the US, other countries' paw prints too. Plus people who want something badly, don't always tell the whole truth; possibly a few fishermans' tales came from the Iraqi dissidents.

Well in Roman times when the Roman army conquered some new land the money that came from that was divided up equally among all Roman citizens. In a couple cases this meant the poorer among them got near a year's income in one fell swoop.

seniorgato:colinspooky: Iraq. No WMDs but has oil. Invade. Best Korea. Yes WMDs or at least boasting such and threatening out loud to use them, but no oil. Stern letter.

We didn't get one friggen gallon of oil and our gas prices went from like $1.00 to $4.00. If it was about Oil, we screwed up royally.

It's wasn't for the good of the public, it was for the good of the Military Industrial Complex. It was a wonderful proving ground for the current generation of military hardware. They even got to design, build, and deliver a few new vehicles like the MRAP. It also got all the contracts to build bases, rebuild infrastructure, train personnel, feed the military, provide security etc etc. The MIC is still wary of getting involved in anything in east Asia because it's a logistical nightmare and the profit margins are slim.

ACunningPlan:Leaving bombs out of the equation, because presumably will take them a while to get all the stuff ready and what not, isn't it more worrying that the NK's are messing around with a nuclear facility [again]? Natural disasters strike, plus they are a bunch of crazy people; safety protocols, construction.... Isn't a Chernobyl &/or Fukushima f-up more of a threat than chubby doing any harm by getting all war-mongery?

I just asked that above, no one seems to think so but frankly if we reach THAT point, China needs to man up and take the toys out of their hands.

Leaving bombs out of the equation, because presumably will take them a while to get all the stuff ready and what not, isn't it more worrying that the NK's are messing around with a nuclear facility [again]? Natural disasters strike, plus they are a bunch of crazy people; safety protocols, construction.... Isn't a Chernobyl &/or Fukushima f-up more of a threat than chubby doing any harm by getting all war-mongery?

DysphoricMania:With some of the fuel-air and bunker bombs in our arsenal... we can achieve small yield nuke results, w/o the radiation... just conventional ordinance.

Right, and couple that with our advanced GPS targeting and really, the political disadvantages aside, there really would be no tactical reason to use a nuclear weapon. Nukes would be essential if your accuracy is "We can get it within a mile of the target", but we can knock down a building and leave adjacent buildings largely untouched. We neither need nor want their cities lying in burning ruins, we simply need to destroy their capacity to make war, and that can be done pretty much with tomahawks alone.

awalkingecho:PanicMan: Listen, if you need food, just ask for food. If you need technology, just ask for it. We'll give it to you. In our country we give our children iPads and mini electric cars. These things are toys to us. The only cost will be you gotta lighten up a bit, and open up more. Tell us things. Tell us what you need.

You want to stay a farm country? Fine. But use modern methods so you can actually feed your people.

North Korea has now achieved one of its most-prized objectives: removal from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. In exchange, the U.S. has received "promises" on verification that are vague and amount to an agreement to negotiate the critical points later. In the Bush administration's waning days, this is what passes for diplomatic "success."Link

HMS_Blinkin: If they managed to get a warhead to an American city (which is near impossible) I would say the chances of us retaliating with nuclear weapons of our own are barely above zero. There's no point nuking a place that's that backward

For starters, I'm not so sure that getting a nuke into America is impossible. Our borders are far from air tight. Someone with enough determination and luck could sneak a payload within blast range the same way people sneak in trailer loads of drugs.

Second, we've got to consider that someone with one nuke might have two.Do we have time to wait for a conventional land army to dismantle that place?

Not that we'd want to encourage the use of these weapons, but we also wouldn't want to lose another city.

It's not really CT, China is making play into Africa for access to minerals and resources. North has a metric ton of mineral and metal resources as well, they just lack the technology and ability to get at them.

Here's the think about the north, though while they are cozy with China they technically do not let China in. They use China as a power chip play against the US and the west in general. In short, no one informed them that the cold war ended years ago, and we don't give a shiat about communism anymore, we just want our cheap electronics.

China is looking at this propped up dictatorship and for the first time actually weighing in the cost vs benefit ration and wondering if maybe just perhaps they either turn a blind eye for a bit, or handle the problem themselves if they couldn't be better off.

Sensual Tyrannosaurus:Forgot to mention, but if the media in China is critical of North Korea, then it's safe to say that the government also does not like them. They keep a pretty good focus on their messaging and generally the media is in line with the state's positions.

A journalist in China just got jailed for writing an article critical of N.Korea and calling for China to cut them off.

Sensual Tyrannosaurus:I don't know why everyone's so worried about China. Their official statements have basically been "We think America is showing proper restraint and North Korea is off the chain and needs to reign it back in" and their media as a whole is very critical of Un, even calling him 'Fatty Kim' and such.Hell, if North Korea touches anyone in the region China will probably flatten them, and I would very much like to see that. I'm tired of America playing the lone sheriff in town. There are other strong countries, let them take care of their local problems.

With all the talk of debt payoff, perhaps the US and China struck a deal to give China BK's mineral reserves.

On the other hand, the aftermath of the Great 2 Hour War with BK would make an awesome Fallout 5.

Forgot to mention, but if the media in China is critical of North Korea, then it's safe to say that the government also does not like them. They keep a pretty good focus on their messaging and generally the media is in line with the state's positions.

Vodka Zombie:I would feel kind of bad if we nuked North Korea. The people there are pretty much political prisoners and completely ignorant of the planet.

It would be like blowing up a box of kittens.

But, hey! You guys go ahead with your nuclear holocaust fetish.

We are never going to nuke NK. The consequences for doing that in a region so unstable are mind-boggling, never mind that we're supposed to be the 'lead-by-example' country in terms of not using them and, eventually, reducing stockpiles. Even if NK led with a nuke, the response would be conventional, and it would not be forgiving.

Vodka Zombie:I would feel kind of bad if we nuked North Korea. The people there are pretty much political prisoners and completely ignorant of the planet.

It would be like blowing up a box of kittens.

But, hey! You guys go ahead with your nuclear holocaust fetish.

No one is going to nuke them. EVEN if they used a nuke, I seriously doubt anyone would respond with nuclear weapons. A few precision strikes could eliminate their ability to make war with hopefully a minimum of casualties. What happens after the dust settles though, well that's the big mystery.

That said, China seems to be getting sick of Best Korea's shiat, so we may see an invasion soon.

China was sick of Best Korea's shiat in 2002. South Korea would happily let the whole nation starve to death then wander into the empty space to build condos. North Korea's saber rattling is like a starving dog barking at everyone who comes near the fence.

colinspooky:Iraq. No WMDs but has oil. Invade. Best Korea. Yes WMDs or at least boasting such and threatening out loud to use them, but no oil. Stern letter.

This.

I'm just glad I'm not in Korea. I was stationed at Camp Red Cloud (I was in the Air Force, but stationed on the Army camp as a geographically separated unit). I was there in the late 90's when things were stable, for the most part. The only incident when I was there was some NK spies/special forces were captured in the sea off the SK coast. We had to lock the base down and upper brass was getting serious for about two weeks. So for pretty much the whole time I was there, it was a party all the time with a few deployments to the Korean countryside (I was in a mobile Comm unit). I guessing nobody is having a good time there at the moment.

The Norks are collapsing. They are probably no more than weeks/a couple of months from total economic meltdown. Whenever they got in this situation in the past, Madeline Albright showed up with food. Now no one is showing up with food, and the Norks can't figure it out.